


Attention

by theheadandthekin



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Shade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9077761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheadandthekin/pseuds/theheadandthekin
Summary: Abbie was used to it. It didn't mean she liked it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry at all.

Abbie was used to it. But that didn't mean she liked it.

She noticed it happening from the very beginning. The medical examiner. The barista. The suspect. The florist at the farmer's market. The pharmacist at Walgreens. It happened a _lot._

She let it slide for a long time because he was a weirdo, and he was bound to draw attention. Shrill pomposity wrapped in a dirty antique coat would do that.

So she told herself, and tried hard to block out the blonde Junior League moms behind them in line at Starbucks whispering about his "so yummy" accent.

* * *

If the story Abbie told herself were true—that he drew attention because he literally stood out as a tall, handsome, and very loud weirdo in a _Hamilton_ costume—it would have gotten better over time as he assimilated and found some public manners, not worse. Sleepy Hollow was a small town. People adjusted.

Except it did get worse. It was like they got _bolder_ over time, rather than bored. And it used to be that along with breathy "wow"s and "look at those fingers," she'd at least get acknowledged with a "she's so lucky." Wrongly acknowledged, true (on more than one count) ... but still acknowledged.

Now? Like she was invisible. They'd walk right up to him and ogle, nearly stepping on her to get to his side. Sometimes they'd notice they'd bumped into a familiar lieutenant from the county sheriff's department, nervous eyes flitting to the gun and badge prominently displayed on her hip. When that happened, they'd titter nervously, clearly unwilling to speak their minds but unable to hide the direction of their thoughts.

Again, she was used to it. She was a Black woman in America, badge or no. As long as _he_ didn't ignore her in favor of attention from his growing fan club, and as long as a demon-hunting mission was never interrupted by one of them again ("Love the stallion tail!" the woman had cried before almost being carried off by a giant, purple-winged creature; Abbie'd shot it square in the face to save her stupid ass), she could handle it.

"Do you think they have meetings?" She asked as a particularly brazen one scurried away in the lobby of the public library. The woman had come up to them while they were checking out, pushed Abbie aside—no apology—, and asked Crane if she could take a video of him paging through a book.

Abbie ended up laughing too hard at her partner's expense to even be offended by the woman's rudeness.

"Probably."

"That video's already all over their secret Facebook group. Hey, maybe you should start charging a fee if you're going to do porn. You know, since you don't have a job."

* * *

Every person, though, has her limit.

Abbie wasn’t sure if it had actually gotten even worse after he’d returned from his extended walkabout abroad, or if she was simply more sensitive to it. She was still angry with him for running away—like she hadn’t needed _him—_ and harbored real resentment for his lack of interest in communicating with her for nine months. Yet living with him—whatever that meant and wherever it was going—also gave her a much better sense of the differences between his public and private personae.

Wedding vows at home and invisibility in public were not what she’d signed up for—at all. The disconnect made the women (the men thankfully just straight-up propositioned him) scrambling over her, cooing and trying to pet his hair, a hell of a lot less funny.

He seemed not to notice at all. Worse, he seemed to be less than attuned to her increasing discomfort with all of this shit.

The final straw came when she’d come home after an exhausting day ( _fuck_ Daniel Reynolds and his shady ass) and her roommate/partner/soulmate/whatever declared, “pie for dinner, Miss Mills!” and whisked her away to the diner.

She spotted them before they even sat down. Two booths away, they hid their excitement that Ichabod Crane Had Entered The Building very poorly.

The waitress had just disappeared into the kitchen when the four older White ladies got up to approach their table. Abbie laid a hand on her gun tucked into her shoulder holster, just in case.

This was her fucking tribulation, wasn’t it?

They hovered awkwardly at the end of the booth eyeing Crane for a second before Abbie spoke. “Um, excuse you?”

For the first time _ever_ , one of them—probably the ringleader—looked her in the eyes. With a smile, she assessed Abbie. “That’s no way for a public _servant_ to speak to a citizen of this great country, is it? Maybe I should _Tweet_ about it. There’s so much overreach in federal law enforcement, isn’t there, Ichabod?”

She was going to keep her mouth shut. But if he did anything but tell them to fuck right the fuck off, she was going to murder him.

And of course he fell as far below her expectations as he possibly could. Apparently he saved all his rude grumpiness for her now.

“No, _no,_ of course.” He fluttered his fingers above the tabletop, and four phones magically appeared, snapping photos and videos. “Lieutenant, if we indulge them, then they’ll leave us alone. Perhaps if I buy them pie, too ….”

"Fuck you, Crane. _You_ invited me out. And haven’t you noticed? Because I have. They _never_ leave us alone."

He furrowed his brow, looking genuinely confused. Nope, she wasn’t going to fall for it. “I’m sorry?”

"Yeah, maybe you’d notice if they were shoving _you_ out of the way to get to me.” She pawed at her coat, making sure she had her own set of car keys. “Call me when your little fan club starts paying your bills and giving you a roof over you head. You like being a kept man, right? Then at least we can have this conversation as equals.”

"Abbie, please—"

"Actually, no. Don't call me.” She pushed her way out of the booth and was replaced on the seat by two of them before she was even clear of the table.

She turned her attention to the women crowded around him and sneered with disgust. “I’m serious. You can have him. I’m too good for this shit.”

 “Abbie …,” Crane pleaded as one of them slipped a hand into the neck of his shirt.

“I’m done rescuing your sorry ass. _You_ have enabled this. You act like I’m disposable, _they_ act like I’m disposable.”

If it weren’t about the matter of her very existence, the way they were on him like leeches would’ve been painfully hilarious.

She slammed the diner’s door with as much dignity as she could and was satisfied with the way it bounced off the exterior glass before battering back.

* * *

He showed up at her door ( _her_ door, not _their_ door) at about 11:30 that night. Even though he had a key, he knocked.

Good.

She stood on her tiptoes and stared at him through the window. He was drenched, and possibly covered in greenish ooze. She couldn’t really tell.

“I’m not letting you in,” she yelled through the door.

“I got rid of them, Lieutenant. Abbie.”

She zeroed in on the mucous-y substance dripping down the collar of his coat and clinging to his beard. “Do I wanna know?”

He nodded. “Mostly harmless. They feed on something called ‘squees.’ In their supernatural forms, they are very … furry and have quite long fingers that they use to augment spoken communication. As males of their species are rare, they target human males with similar characteristics. They become very protective of their food source, too. Apparently.”

“Hence all the weird shit with your hair and fingers?”

“Hence all the weird shit with my hair and fingers.”

Abbie allowed herself a soft chuckle. “If they’re harmless, why the, uh, demon entrails?”

He held her gaze a long moment. She could see the wheels turning.

“Tell me, Crane, or I’m not letting you in.”

He moved closer to the window and leaned his forehead against it. “They quite literally exploded when I told them I love you.”

It was probably the wrong response, but all she could do was laugh. Genuinely and joyously.

“Bigoted fangirl demons. Who'd have thought." She relaxed into a smile. "So. Lesson learned?”

“Lesson learned.”

“Hose that mess off before you come in the house.”


End file.
